Masterclass: E How to Hook and Keep Your Reader with Humour with Mira Reisberg

At Mira Reisberg’s keynote presentation at the beginning of the SCBWI Conference 2019 she said a lot of things that were not only true but also inspirational but one piece of advice stuck with me especially – always read picture books (or any kidlit book really) twice. The first time for pleasure and the second time for analysis. When you do this you will discover quickly what works and why.

Images of Mira’s Keynote presentation courtesy of Liz Anelli

Images of Mira’s Keynote presentation courtesy of Liz Anelli

A fantastic example for this is humour in picture books or middle grade. Fun and humour, if delivered well, will always make a manuscript better. In her masterclass Mira firstly separated the audience in picture books and MA analysists of humour.

Techniques considered to help induce humour to your writing (or illustrating) are:

- Anthromorphism (eg. A friendly duck doctor)

- Personification

- Dark humour

- Self-deprecating humour

- Irony/ sarcasm

- Hyperbole/ exaggeration

- Contradiction

- Incongruity or surrealism (talking fridge)

- Slapstick/ physical humour (slipping on a banana peel)

- Gross/ potty humour

- Contrast characters

- Parody

- Joke telling

- Mashups

- Surprise/ defiant humour

- Wordplay

- Visual humour

For full details on Mira’s presentation and a copy of the slideshow, click on this link, here.

Attendants were then asked to join an exercise by coming up with or using one of their own texts paragraphs and include the word “no!” as much as possible as an example of exaggerated humour.

Kids love when something they are faced with on a daily basis is incorporated and played with in texts. It hooks them in. The results were fascinating – loveable silly and funny texts that gave the original text a whole different, humorous approach.

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The next group exercise was a fun play with fear. Attendants were asked to take an everyday stressful or fear-inducing event for kids and change the characters into Halloween genre characters. This character then had to tackle a fearful event and form a story of less than 500 words which showed the consequences, aftermath or celebration of this event, even including an end with a fun twist. This exercise was supported with a worksheet that introduced certain elements with the help of columns in a very structured way.

As an illustrator, I really enjoyed the exercise for introducing visual humour to a graphic novel excerpt. I chose contradiction as means to add humour and came up with the character of “King Ivan Important” – a tiny king who wants to be as significant as his big wife, the queen. In order to achieve this he buys himself a very long-legged horse and appears quite big now. Very much to the dismay of the queen who starts plotting against him. The play of contradiction between power and tiny body size could be very appealing in a children’s story. (Indeed! Can’t wait to see / read this one, Katrin. Ed.)

Mira's Masterclass Katrin.jpg

Attendants left this brilliant masterclass with a suitcase full of new ideas and worksheet material as well as Mira’s detailed slides.

by Katrin Dreiling

#SCBWISyd













Masterclass D: Picture Books with Essie White

Storm Literary agent/partner Essie White is passionate about creating beautiful and meaningful books for children. Her passion started as an educator when she learnt that providing children with exceptional literature was imperative in education.

Five years ago, Essie made the seamless transition from educator to agent – both careers harbour a true love for children’s literature.

“YOU NEED GRAB CHILDREN’S ATTENTION FROM THE VERY BEGINNING”
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Essie’s masterclass was generous and thorough providing all participants with important takeaways.

  • Title – make it good and alert the reader to the concept. The title must also set the tone, introduce the character and setting.

  • First sentence – make it better than the title. It must snag attention and hold it immediately.

  • Narrative Arc – start with a great plot and begin with a ‘bang’. Immediately alert the reader to the crisis and establish the character’s motivation. Motivation drives the story forward. The protagonist responds to the crisis or cause which results in ACTION. The Protagonist then overcomes!

  • Create a satisfying ending – bring the story full circle. It must also resonate deeply.

  • Unforgettable Characters – ensure they are fully developed and they are authentic, memorable and create merchandising opportunities.

  • Language and word choice – Be selective – 500 to 750 words or less. Non-Fiction can be longer.

  • Verbs – Vivid, Active, and Visual!

  • Cadence – rising and falling of voice.

  • Convey emotion – be authentic to the character

  • Avoid rhyme (it does work occasionally).

Essie outlined some Universal Themes in picture books.:

  • Firsts: First day of school, first pet, first birthday, first unicorn costume!

  • Momentous Events: New baby, new pet, Doctor visit etc.

  • Relationships: Parents, siblings, grandparents, neighbours, teachers, community members

  • Animals and more!

“A GOOD BOOK EMPOWERS AND GIVES PURPOSE, IT KEEPS KIDS THINKING.”

The necessary collaboration between author and illustrator

Author –

  1. Provide illustration notes but give artist room to breathe

  2. Share research/background info

  3. Offer feedback on sketches (when asked)

Illustrator –

  1. Do your research (especially non-fiction)

  2. Accuracy is imperative

  3. Be selective

  4. Sometimes your vision needs to be flexible.

Illustrations should:

  • Help children understand what they are reading.

  • They should enhance the text and move the narrative forward.

  • Stimulate imagination and allow children to analyse.

  • Help create the mood of the story.

  • Must have storytelling capabilities and establish the primary character…especially in wordless picture books (very popular in the US right now).

Essie also spoke about the use of shapes and colours to create mood and feelings in illustrations.

  • Yellow – hope

  • Red – anger

  • Blue – calm

  • Grey – gloom

  • Circle – warmth, completeness, wholesome

  • Rectangles – ridgity, inflexibility, enclosed

  • Triangles – Hierarchy, power, strong, solidarity, substantive

Click on the video for a visual snapshot of the session by Roving Reporter, Giuseppe Poli.

Essie’s final message was so important.

The goal of picture books should be to:

Provide a beautiful experience that leaves the reader impacted, empowered, challenged and changed. Good children’s literature is transformative!

by Rachel Noble

#SCBWISyd

Masterclass B: Picture Book Illustration 101: Bringing My Dead Bunny Alive

Learning how to bring illustrations alive and their impact on the visual narrative is key to successful picture book illustration. James Foley used his CBCA shortlisted book My Dead Bunny as an example of picture book illustration in this captivating master class.

James talked about how character design, choice of media, colour, line, typography, image boundaries and composition all affect the visual narrative, and how you can control these variables in your own work.

Research:

  • All books begin with research.

  • Use reference photos to help develop characters, setting and colours.

Character design:

  • Sketch and re-sketch the character in many different ways.

  • Try a variety of styles: realistic, cartoon etc.

  • What size and shape will their body have? tall, short, solid, circles, triangles, squares

  • What type of body language or mannerisms wills they how?

  • What colour scheme, patterns, line work style will be used for the illustrations?

  • Develop Character Reference Sheets showing the character from the front view, three quarter view and profile.

  • Develop Cast Sheets to see all the characters next to each other.

  • Check to see if the characters are identifiable from one another. As a silhouette you should be able to tell who each character is from their outline.

Planning - storyboards, dummy books:

James shared a few of his storyboards and dummy books. He described this step like jigsaw pieces coming together to make a complete picture.

Storyboards and dummy books show:

  • Pacing and page turns.

  • Illustrations with the text placed on the page.

  • That the important information is not in the gutter or bleed area.

  • How the extra story layers work with the main story.

  • That eye movement pathways from left to right for both the text and images.

Media Testing:

James used a range of images from books to highlight how media choice creates the tone of the story. Media may include but is not limited to; watercolour, acrylic, pencil, pastels, paper collage, digital, mud and food.

Take a look at some of the books James showed the masterclass and the media they were created with:

Final Artwork

The last step of creating a picture book is creating the final artwork. The typography has been chosen and the visual narrative is cohesive. All the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are in the right spot.

Now it is your turn to create using this illustration process. Participants had a short amount of time to develop characters using the process and the story Ugly Fish written by Kara LaReau.

Happy Illustrating!

Leanne Barrett

#SCBWISyd

Extras - Video Links:

Ann James Painting with Mud is my Medium

Quentin Blake How to Draw Willy Wonka

Bruce Whatley Drawing Your Characters with Bruce Whatley

Gus Gordon Meet Gus Gordon, Story Box Library

Eric Carle Eric Carle on the illustration of the Brown Bear Series